Griefbots & Digital Duplicates - What happens when we make an AI version of a real person?

Welcome to Episode 3 for our exclusive Series 1 on companion chatbots, where you’ll hear from our first guest speaker, Atay Kozlovski.

In this episode, you’ll hear all about griefbots, which are AI replicas of a REAL person (living or deceased) that people create to continue a relationship after, for example, a breakup or a death. Atay Kozlovski, an ethicist, is joining us to tell us all about his work on griefbots and the umbrella concept of “digital duplicates.” We’ll talk about the various forms of digital duplicates and provide you with real-world examples of each, and then you’ll hear us go into (of course) a deep dive on the risks and benefits of these bots, including tricky questions like consent and having funerals (!!!) for these types of AI companions.

Please make note of the sensitive content covered in brief within this episode.

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

11:30-12:20 - SA and deepfake pornography mentioned

24:30-24:45 - suicide mentioned

In the final episode in this series, you'll hear from another guest speaker - one who will talk about anthropomorphism (thinking these things are humanlike) and even - drumroll - consciousness!

In the last episode, we covered research and news on companion chatbots. We covered early research in psychology, human-computer interaction, and business. Then, we gave you a sense of some of the recent news releases on human-chatbot relationships - like Meta’s regulatory report, the man who ~thought~ he was going to visit a real-life person, this weird new companion called “Friend” (it’s like an airtag around your neck - but also surveillance - but your friend?), and more.

This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.

Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.

Links to Atay’s & colleagues’ work:

• Paula Sweeny on ex-bots paper

• Digital duplicates in the context of holocaust remembrance (YouTube)

• Ethics of digital duplicates paper

• Taxonomy of ethics and risks of digital duplicates

• Surrogate decision making paper

• • Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry
  • Governing ghostbots